Cards

Cards sends e-cards by email. You pick a design, write your message, and choose who it goes to and when: now, on a date, on each contact's birthday, or on the days of your Calendar events. Open it from Cards in the admin sidebar (Cards).

Want other people to send cards from your site too? Switch on card credits: card makers sign up and pay for what they send in credits. See the Card credits tab.

What people receive

• An email with a picture of the front of the card and an Open your card button. Replies come to you.

• The card itself, on its own page. It works like a real card: each tap moves on a step.

  1. The envelope arrives in your colours, with your lining and stamp and their name written on the front.
  2. The front comes out of the envelope.
  3. The inside opens like a book, both pages side by side. The effect you picked plays (ticker tape, butterflies, twinkling stars or a seasonal celebration), with the sound you picked.
  4. The back shows next. Tap again for the front.

  Back and Next under the card, and the step names (Envelope, Front, Inside, Back), move around too, and so does a swipe. On a phone:

  • Read larger shows the inside big enough to read.
  • A note suggests turning the phone sideways for a bigger card.

• At the bottom of the email and the card is a link to stop receiving cards. Anyone who uses it is never sent another card from your site.

Getting started

1. Check the site can send email. System > Site Settings > Email needs your SMTP details. Then set Site URL on the General tab (for example https://example.com), because card links are built on it.

2. Open Cards and press New card in the banner.

3. Pick a design. There are over 250, for 48 occasions - including Happy any day, which says whichever day it goes out on - covering birthdays, weddings, new babies, leaving, sorry, missing you, baby showers, christenings, teachers, exams, Christmas, Diwali, Eid, Holi, Thanksgiving and more. For birthdays alone there are nearly 50:

   • for him and for her, flowers, drinks, crowns, pets and gaming
   • children's themes (dinosaurs, unicorns, space, football, ice cream), and a first birthday
   • every milestone from 18 to 100 as a big number
   • belated and funny ones

   Above the occasions, choose Classic, Funny or Memes. Rude cards (swearing and adult humour, 29 of them) stay hidden until you tick Show rude cards; this browser remembers the choice.

   You can change everything on the next screen.

4. Work through the tabs (described below). The preview on the right changes as you type. Use Envelope / Front / Inside / Back above the preview to see each side, and Play to watch it open. Play above the preview plays the whole card from the envelope, effect and sound included. Full preview shows the card exactly as the person will see it, starting from the envelope, at desktop size, with Phone and Tablet sizes a click away. You can also open it in a tab of its own. Nothing is counted as opened. It is also in each card's menu in the list.

5. Under Who, choose who it goes to. Under When, press Send now or Schedule.

Press Send a test to me at any time to see the email in your own inbox. Your changes save themselves.

The editor's tabs

• Design:
  • Switch to another design at any time. It brings its own words, artwork and text; your signature, your photos and the text boxes and stickers you added come with you. Undo (just after a switch) puts the last design back.
  • Pick one of 40 colour sets, or set each colour yourself. Every picture and sticker repaints itself in your colours.
  • Choose fonts for headings, writing and handwriting.
  • Choose a paper finish: smooth, linen, kraft, a watercolour wash or dotted.
• Front:
  • The words on the front and their size and colour (long words shrink to fit).
  • The layout and the artwork. The Meme layout fills the card with a picture and puts the words on top and underneath in big white capitals.
  • A photo of your own, uploaded from your device or chosen from the ones you uploaded before.
• Inside:
  • The inside pages:
    • a background (plain, a tint, a pattern of the artwork, a soft wash)
    • a border (a fine line, a double line, dashes, artwork in the corners, a coloured frame)
    • which artwork the pattern and corners use, and a small picture above the message
  • Your message, in the writing or handwriting font, with its size, alignment, position on the page and colour. Insert a ready-made message, limerick, poem or saying… gives you words for every occasion to start from: messages, limericks, short poems and sayings, plus funny ones (and rude ones, once rude cards are showing).
  • Signed: the words, size, colour and alignment.
  • The left page shows artwork, a photo, a quote (in any of the card's fonts, sizes and colours) or nothing. Put a limerick, poem or saying on the left page… fills the quote for you.
• Back: a few words, a small picture and your site's name.
• Envelope: whether the card comes in one at all (Send it in an envelope - off, it arrives out of its envelope and opens at the front), its colour, lining and stamp, and whether their name is written on it.
• Opening & effects:
  • How it opens: Classic, Bouncy, Slow & grand or Peek-a-boo.
  • What plays: ticker tape or butterflies (one burst or falling, in the card's colours or a set), twinkling stars, or a celebration (Christmas, Halloween, Valentine's, Bonfire Night, St Patrick's, St David's, St George's, St Andrew's). For a celebration you can tap the parts you don't want.
• Sound: 34 to choose from.
  • Tunes: Happy Birthday, For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, Jingle Bells, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Auld Lang Syne, the wedding march, Brahms' Lullaby, Ode to Joy, Twinkle Twinkle on a music box, and a romantic arpeggio.
  • Effects: chime, sparkle, party horn, fanfare, ta-da, drum roll and cymbal, harp, magic wand, xylophone, wind chimes, applause, fireworks, birdsong and a spooky theremin.
  • Comedy: sad trombone, rimshot (ba-dum-tss), air horn, record scratch, slide whistle, Happy Birthday on a kazoo, a whoopee cushion, clown horn, boing and crickets. Press the speaker to listen. It plays as the card opens, and people can turn it off. The card always plays its animations and sound, whatever the device's motion settings.
• Who:
  • The email's subject and the name it is from.
  • The email: its greeting, its message (blank lines make paragraphs) and the button's label, with the placeholders below. Leave one empty for the standard wording. The link underneath and the unsubscribe line always stay.
  • Who it goes to.
  • Personal notes: a few words for one person that only they see, under your message.
• When: see below.

Your own words, pictures and stickers

On the Front, Inside and Back tabs:

• Add text puts your own words anywhere on that side of the card, in any of the card fonts, colours and sizes. You can turn them at an angle, and give them a style: Meme (big white capitals with a black outline), outlined, a drop shadow or highlighted.
• Add a picture puts one of your photos anywhere on that side: upload it from your device (big photos are made smaller first) or choose one you uploaded before. Give it a frame (rounded, a circle, an instant photo with a caption, a heart, a torn edge or a postage stamp), a size and an angle. Up to eight on each side.
• Background photo fills the whole side with a photo, under everything else. Darken it keeps white words readable, and the two sliders choose which part of the photo shows.
• Add a sticker adds over 60, from balloons and hearts to googly eyes, pixel sunglasses, LOL and 18+, painted in your colours.

Drag any of them around in the preview to place it. Click one, here or in the preview, to change it, or to remove it.

Some designs - the meme ones especially - come with empty photo slots. In the preview they say Add a photo: click one to put your photo in it. A slot you leave empty shows the design's own drawing on the card that goes out (or nothing).

The photos you upload here are yours: other people making cards do not see them. If you can use Content › Media, the photo picker also has a Media library tab with every picture there.

Placeholders

Anywhere you can type, these are filled in for each person:

• {{firstName}} and {{name}}
• {{ordinalAge}}, for example "40th", on a birthday card when Contacts Pro knows the year they were born
• {{weekday}}, the day the card goes out: "Happy {{weekday}}!" sent on a Friday says "Happy Friday!" (the Happy any day designs use it)
• {{senderName}} and {{siteName}}

Cards that keep going: rules

Three of the When choices are rules. A rule keeps sending until you pause it, and Turn on starts it.

• Each birthday: each person you chose gets the card on their birthday, every year, at the time you set. Birthdays come from Contacts Pro. A contact with no birthday is skipped.
• A Calendar event: the card goes on each of that event's dates, to the contacts and groups linked to the event (and anyone you chose here). You can also start one from the Calendar: right-click an event and choose Send a card….
• A type of event: every one of your events of that type (for example Anniversary) sends the card on its dates, to that event's people.

Under the schedule, Next sends lists what is coming up in the next year. Only events you organise count.

A day the site was switched off is not caught up the next day: a birthday card a day late is worse than none.

Results

Right-click a card and choose Results (or use the banner in the editor). You see how many were sent and opened, and one row per person.

• Opened means they tapped the envelope on the card's page. Opening the email, or a mail scanner checking the link, does not count.
• Copy link puts a link to that person's card on your clipboard, to paste into WhatsApp, a text or anywhere else. Copy all links copies everyone's, one per line with their name. A copied link shows the card only: it has no way to unsubscribe the person, does not show their email address, and opening it does not count as them opening the card.
• Send again with a fresh link sends it again. The old links stop working, a copied one included.
• Withdraw the link makes their link say the card has been withdrawn.

You also get a notification when a card has gone out, and the first time each person opens one.

The sidebar badge

The Cards badge counts the cards going out in the next seven days. Hover it to see which ones. It pulses while a card is being sent.

Unsubscribes

Unsubscribes in the banner lists everyone who asked for no more cards. Remove someone only if they ask to have cards again.

Settings

Under the plugin's settings:

• timeZone (default Europe/London): the time zone that schedule times and birthdays are read in.
• maxRecipients (default 500): the most people one card, or one day of a rule, may go to.
• maxPerDay (default 1000): the most cards the whole site sends in a day, every card and every user together. Scheduling a card bigger than that, or one for today when today's allowance is used up, is refused with the reason; a rule that runs into the ceiling keeps the rest queued and sends them after midnight.
• sendGapMs (default 1000): the pause between two emails. A burst is what gets mail marked as spam.

Limitations

• The picture in the email needs Chrome on the server. Without it, the email still goes with the button but no picture, and the editor says so.
• The picture in the email shows the front only. The inside, the effects and the sound are on the card's page.
• A card that has gone out cannot be changed, because people already have it. Duplicate it to send another.
• Birthdays need Contacts Pro, and event cards need the Calendar.